Suburban Land Agency seeking affordable housing expressions of interests for Taylor

The ACT government’s Suburban Land Agency is seeking expressions of interest for the delivery of affordable housing in Taylor.

Tenders are open for 23 affordable housing packages and six for community housing, and next week the government agency will be holding an industry briefing for builders and developers.

There are 219 blocks currently up for tender across the affordable and community housing packages, and of those there is a minimum for 82 affordable dwellings and 59 community housing dwellings.

The community blocks are exclusively available to registered community housing providers.

Blocks are mostly single residential with some terrace-style dwellings in the community housing dwellings. The blocks are also build-ready.

“Not every block in every package is affordable,” a Suburban Land Agency spokeswoman said. “We’ve actually set them up quite deliberately to have some blocks that will have affordable product on them and some adjacent blocks that don’t need to be sold at an affordable threshold.”

For a home to be considered affordable the maximum price is $434,000 for blocks with a net living area greater than 105 square metres.

For blocks between 80 to 105 square metres, the maximum is $381,000 and below 80 square metres it’s $330,000.

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To be eligible to purchase an affordable dwelling, households with up to two children must have a gross income of less than $100,000. The limit increases by $16,000 per child to a capped maximum of five children.

In the future, the spokeswoman said 15 per cent of the program would feature affordable dwellings.

“I would expect at least 15 per cent of the dwellings in Taylor will be identified as affordable,” she said.

Single residential affordable housing has not been delivered at this scale in the ACT in recent years, and the spokeswoman said next week’s industry briefing will give them the opportunity to guide builders and developers on their expectations.

“The expression of interests are calling for industry to bring creative and innovative ideas in delivering affordable housing but we recognise, because we are asking them to be creative and think outside the box it would be good to get interested parties into a room and have a presentation,” she said.

“We are going to run through what our expectations are, and have an opportunity for them to ask questions about what is and isn’t out of scope.”

The ACT government’s indicative land release for 2019-20 slates the release of 200 blocks in Taylor. Over the 2020-21 year, 591 blocks will be released. Construction has started on most stages of Canberra’s northernmost suburb.

In June, seven multi-unit blocks in Taylor were auctioned, all of which passed in on the day.

At this stage, the tenders are open just for builders and developers. The industry briefing will be held on Wednesday, August 7 from 4-5pm at the Ainslie Football Club.